Kenneth Copeland - Love One Another
Kenneth Copeland: Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, we thank You today. We are so blessed that we know You, and that we know and understand that You are love. And that Your love is unconditional. You loved us when we were nothing, you loved us when we were trying to go to hell and You just loved us anyway. Then You just loved us on into the Kingdom of God, and we thank You and praise You for it. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we pray and praise You, and give You honor today. Amen. Thank You Lord. Now, of course our golden text has been John 3:16, but now today let's go over to the 13th chapter of John. Now, most Christians don't realize and understand that this beginning... What beginning with 13th chapter?
Greg Stephens: 13th, 14th, 15th.
— 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th chapters of John were all in the middle of the night, in this place of what was called the Last Supper; the Covenant Meal. The prayer and the meal that changed the entire world. So let's go there. And in this 13th chapter... Now, verse 23. Now think about this. They were not at a big table that seated 13. That's an artist's rendering of that thing. So you'd need a table for 26, right? Because they're all on one side. No. Like one guy said, "If you want to get in the picture, you need to get on that side of the table". That's how... Well, really, anyway. It was very dimly lit in there. Verse 22. "Then the disciples looked on another doubting of whom He spake". Now, he said that somebody is... "One of you is going to betray me". "Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved". Now look at this, I want you to understand, this man was... this speaks huge of Mr. Zebedee. Because Peter, James, and John, and two of them were brothers.
— That's right.
— The top three. So now notice this, "There was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter, therefore beckoned to him that he should ask who He's talking about". Now look at that. Peter said, "Ask Him who it is". And John said, "Ask Him yourself". "No, no, no, no, no, you ask Him".
— They were always doing that, all the time throughout scripture you'll find out. The Greeks want to see it.
— But here's John, he was right there. He's the one that stayed with Jesus all the way through the trial, all the way through it all. Now, notice this, let's come on down because you need to really see something. "He then lying on Jesus breast said to Him, 'Lord, who is it?' He said, 'He is who I give the sop when I have dipped it.' And when he dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop, Satan entered into him then Jesus said to him, 'What you do, do quickly.' Now no man at the table knew for what intent He spoke this unto him, for some thought, because Judas had the bag that Jesus said, 'Buy those things that we have need against the feast,' or that he should give something to the poor". Jesus had such a reputation for giving that they thought, "Well maybe there's somebody he needs to get... it just came on Him suddenly in the middle of the night". Now, he then received the sop and went out immediately out and it was night. Jesus got him out of there before he got into the depth of the rest of this. Now notice, "Therefore when he was gone out, Jesus said, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him'. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself and shall straightway glorify Him. Little children, yet a little while I'm with you, you shall seek me, and as I said to the Jews, 'Where I go, you cannot come.' So now I say to you". He got him out of there, and he said the most important words to ever come out of anyone's mouth. "A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another; as I have loved you. A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another even as I have loved you". Now, let's go back over here to the gospel of Luke in the sixth chapter. "But I say unto you, which hear, love your enemies, do good to them that hate you. Bless them that curse you and pray for them which despitefully use you". Love your enemies. I ask the question, can a soldier in combat love his enemies? He better. Now, when I brought that up on the Navajo reservation, Ellison Bennett, Dan Akee, a Navajo code talker. Now to those of you that maybe don't know who the Navajo code talkers were, the Japanese were listening in on everything. They were very fluent in English. We had translators that were very fluent in Japanese. But these men were Navajo. They'd never heard anything like the Navajo language. Not only have they never heard about it before, but there was a code inside the code. If I remember right, a turtle was a tank. So it was double coded. And these men were in great danger because they realized they had somebody on those radios that if they didn't kill these guys... you got to get rid of them. Dan Akee: "A dishonored warrior is a warrior that fights without love". A dishonored warrior. A very, very, very close friend of mine. He flew F-100 in the Misty squadron in the Southeast Asia. And he had some outstanding experiences. At this time, strong Southern Baptist man, and he said "David was a warrior and they couldn't kill him, then I'm a warrior and you can't kill me". And things that happened to him were very unusual. But before I met him, now those that had not heard this, my mother had a prayer group that would get so large that she couldn't get close to my dad's house. And it'd turn into a church and she'd wait a year or two and start another one. And after Hugh got out of the air force he went to work the airlines, and he was unhappy there. And, when a guy has flown in the kind of combat that he had, and then to sit there and just drive up and down the airways, it was really a bore.
— Like driving a bus.
— Yeah. It was driving a bus.
— Right.
— And anyway, someone brought him to see my mother, for my mother to pray for him. And brought him in there in my mother and dad's living room and he sat down in a chair there in front of her and she just looked at him. She said, "Young man, there's a spirit of murder on you". She didn't know anything about him. Now she knew he was a born-again man because she asked everybody that, that she didn't know. spirit of murder on him. And he said, "When she said it, I knew exactly what she was talking about". He said, they would go in and strafe and bomb those airfields. And the minute they got out of sight, there were just a myriad of Chinese that would come in there and repair it, and they'd fix it as fast says you bombed it. And he said, "I'd lay there in my bunk and I'd think, how can I kill those people"? And he told me, he said, "Kenneth," he said, "I could have done that properly, I could have prayed and said, Lord, how can I fix this"? But he said, "No". He said, "I didn't pray that". He said, "I hated the people I was fighting". And he said, "I was seeing my good friends killed, and I hated these people". And he said, "I hated those Chinese," and he said, "I lay there in my bunk and figure out how I can kill more of them, and more of them, and more of them, and more of them". He was a dishonorable warrior. But my mother cast that thing off of him and changed his life, and then he got baptized in the Holy Spirit and came to work in Kenneth Copeland Ministry for a number of years. He's the man that taught Gloria how to fly. And most people don't know that she learned how to fly, but she did. Hugh Smith and he's in heaven now. And I miss him. But that that's what I'm talking about now. Now-
— Can I show you that chapter in John chapter 13?
— Yes.
— Was Jesus a warrior?
— Absolutely.
— First one, "Now before the feast of the Passover when Jesus knew that his hour was come"...
— Hang on, let me get over there.
— Uh-huh. So this is what they're doing that night, they're doing Passover.
— Yes.
— Jesus knew that his hour was come, that He should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved His own, which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. After supper being ended the devil having it now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son to betray Him, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was... "come from God and went to God, He riseth from supper and laid aside His garments and took a towel and girded Himself. After that He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith". Now Peter gets all incensed about this, "'You're not washing my feet, you're not.' And He says, 'If I don't wash you, I have no part in you.' And he said, 'Well then wash all of me.'" Jesus that night, there is Judas, he's getting ready to give the instructions. He washes all of them.
— Yes, He did. He washed Judas' feet.
— Now there's love personified. The Father's love.
— Yes, it is.
— Giving even to the guy who's going to betray Him. He's doing exactly what you read...
— He never broke covenant with him.
— Never broke.
— Even there in the garden, He called him friend. 99% of people that just goes right over the top of their head. But you remember now, Abraham was God's friend. The King James translation in the book of James says it properly, it capitalized the word friend. If you go to the New King James, it doesn't. They just didn't get it. But those old translators understood more about covenant than the ones that tried to fix it.
— That's right. So Jesus covers for Judas that night even because Peter asked, "Who is it"? He asked John, "Ask him". What would Peter, knowing Peter now, what he's about to do in a few hours. he tries to cut a man's head off that comes to get him and got his ear. I really believe he tried to kill the man.
— I do too. I believed that too.
— Yes. The guy who got him.
— Yeah that's the man that got his ear cut off.
— He's being a dishonorable warrior.
— Yes.
— Because he's doing it by the flesh.
— Yes.
— And Jesus will even stop and heal the man, He said, "Don't do it this way". But had He told him, "Well it's Judas Iscariot". Peter would have followed him outside.
— He'd have killed him.
— He'd have followed him outside because, "You're not going to go to Jerusalem and die. And I'm not going to let that"... Remember that? And Jesus said, "Get thee behind me Satan". In other words, Jesus wouldn't let anything stop the assignment that He was called to do. And this is why it says right there-
— Why? Because He so loved the world.
— Yes. Knew that His hour had come.
— He's a gift. He's God's gift to the world.
— Absolutely right. And He tells Mary His mother at the beginning, the first miracle, "My hour's not yet come". He had come for this specific thing. And Peter would have, I really believe Peter would have tried to stop Judas that night. And I believe it was either Peter or Judas that was going to be the betrayer. Because there was one point where Jesus says to Peter, "Satan's desired to sift you as wheat. But I pray for you". It could have been neither one of them. Because he will end up doing what Judas does, he'll betray that night as well. "Well you're one of them. I know you're one of them". "Hey I never know Him, I don't know who He is". Remember? He'll do exactly what Judas does that very night.
— But he didn't kill himself.
— He didn't kill himself, there's the difference. But Jesus in His love covers Judas to fulfill...
— Yes He did.
— ...the hour that's come.
— He really did.
— Even in the garden when they come to get Him.
— Yes He did.
— And what's interesting is Peter didn't go after Judas that night in the garden, He went after that soldier. And so when you start looking at all of these things that love that He'd been teaching them, and He gives these final instructions to them, "That you'd be one like we're one". Those are the instructions, those instructions haven't changed. If you're a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ today, that instruction's for you as well.
— Now I remember so well, a whole lot the same kind of thing that's happened here. I remember this, and this was back when the political conventions were real conventions it hadn't already been decided and they got in a big hall full of people and they're all going on. And Lyndon Johnson, who's from Texas, and he... "I'm not going to be vice president, I'm going to be president". Well then they made some kind of deal and so he said, "Well, I'll support Mr. Kennedy". Well then all of a sudden he becomes president. And now he's got a tiger by the tail. Because this country was in a mess, I mean a double barrel mess. And so, back there then, this was back before electronic keys and so forth. And we'd go off from our hotel room and leave the news on, turn it up a little bit. And I walked in there and I... and the Lord stopped me right where I was. I just walked in to take my towel off. He said, "You know Lyndon Johnson"? I said, "No, sir". "You know anybody that knows him"? I said, "No, sir". He said, "Sounds to me like you don't know much". Now He said, "What did I say"? 1 Timothy chapter two, "For you to pray and intercede and make supplication, prayers of thanksgiving for all men. Kings and all who are in authority, that the church live in peace. Honesty and godliness, this goodness side of God our Savior". Anyway. And so I said, "Well, all right". I started praying for him. I prayed for him. I prayed for Mr. Johnson. I prayed for him. I prayed for him. I prayed for him. And I didn't like anything he did in Southeast Asia but I'd already promised God I'd pray for him and hold him up. Now, because of that word is the reason I pray for Joe Biden and hold him up. Because I mean, he's got a mess on his hands. Mr. Johnson had a mess on his hands. Just dumped on him. So, you have to love these people.
— Right. You know, there's two sides of that. There's a natural side and the spiritual side. We also have leadership and those in authority over us, spiritually. Pastors, teachers, prophets and things. A lot of times people will pray for the Supreme Court, but they won't pray for their pastor. They talk bad about their pastor at the dinner table and wonder why their kids won't go to church.
— You better go on with that. You better take that...
— And it just rose up in me while you were saying that. You got to also pray for your pastors and the prophet. "Well I don't know if they're a prophet". Well you better stop that right now. And you better pray for them and you better lift them up because, they got a tiger by the tail.
— And pray for the pastor where the ones left your church and went over there.
— Yes. Absolutely. Right.
— Another very close friend of mine, Jimmy Hester, oh man, we talk about a man of God. And of course they were going to Southwest and so forth. And this is back when Jerry Savelle was pastor in church. And so, he thought, "If my people go to that meeting, if they go to Brother Savelle's service, they're liable to go over there and go to his church".
— Well, good.
— And he said, "I was struggling around with that". And he said, "I better get ahold of myself here". And so he started talking about it in his church. He said, "Now the one I want you to go, you get into every service that Jerry Savelle preaches. Now you get into every service he preaches".
— Amen.
— You need to be in the ones he preaches. So all of the members of his church made a point to be in Brother Savelle's service. They came back and doubled the offerings in his own church.
— That's absolutely right.
— They got all excited about of faith and, and what you say, and they got out and started winning souls and his church got bigger.
— The Lord builds the church. He calls you to your church. You don't call yourself to a church, He calls you. He places you, He plants you. Now figure out why you're planted there and get busy with it. Sorry.
— John Osteen, pastoring Lakewood Church in Houston, for those of you that don't know that's Joel Osteen's dad, he would receive offerings, and I kept noticing I was getting... our ministry was getting checks from people at Lakewood Church. And he would say, "Now all of you that Brother Copeland got something out of his messages, you want to give part of your tithe, go ahead and do it". Nobody but John Osteen ever did that and we're out of time.
— Amen.
— Praise God.